The subject of the present invention is a device for the cooling of articles and its use. The preferred field of use of a device according to the invention is the freezing of articles in the food industry, in particular the freezing of drops of a pasty and/or liquid mass.
Hitherto, in particular, foods have been frozen by introducing the articles to be frozen into a stream of a coolant, for example into liquid nitrogen. As a result of contact with the liquid nitrogen, for example in a channel, a cooling and freezing of the corresponding articles take place when the dwell time in the liquid nitrogen is sufficiently long. These appliances cannot be operated continuously, on the contrary they have relatively long times in which they are not operated, for example due to cleaning work which becomes necessary between batch changes. When these appliances are started up, a precooling regularly takes place in this case, which leads to a deformation, in particular a flexion, of the channels used for the throughflow of the coolant. This leads to impermanently defined throughflow properties of the coolant through the channel and consequently to unequal cooling or freezing conditions.